Email marketing is one of the best online marketing tools available to digital marketers. This is one medium of marketing which isn’t controlled by 3rd party sites. If you compare it with social media then you will notice that your twitter profile isn’t truly yours, after all Twitter is the owner of your profile and they can close it at any time they wish.
If you have your customers email id then you have an unrestricted access to their inbox which is pretty much a private space. If you gain access to this space and your emails are accepted here, then surely you have done a good job with email marketing.
However, it might not be the case with everyone, after all, we all make mistakes and there are several mistakes that you can learn, without really committing it.
Here, in this article, we will cover several email marketing mistakes that you can avoid.
1. Send a generic welcome email: This is a mistake that almost everyone makes with their email marketing. You know that you have to send a welcome email and it has to be on automation and without any second thoughts, you set it up on your auto-responder.
It is best that you customize your welcome email with as much details as possible. Don’t let it be a simple template, skip automation if possible, and send this email with the best of your ability so that it stands out and make way for a lasting relation.
2. Let users reply to your email: Having a no-reply email id attached to the email newsletters that you send, is perhaps one of the biggest mistake that almost every company does. These practices of having a don’t-reply email id have been accepted into practice and are almost unquestioned. This is perhaps one of the worst mistake that you can do and fixing it is equally easy, all you have to do is to add an email id where your recipients can reply and get your feedback on it.
3. Sending emails when ever your heart desires: If you don’t send emails regularly and consistently then people will forget you and when they suddenly see your email, and can’t recall you anymore, your email will go straight to spam.
The solution here is to set up an auto-responder email series where your subscribers will get emails on regular intervals and eventually they will start to expect your emails on the scheduled days.
4. Failing to personalize your emails: Email subscribers are regular people and they don’t understand that their names on the email opening or the subject lines are automated. Most people just consider that since the email has their name on it, the sender isn’t a bot and has taken out their time to write the email personally and specifically for them.
If you fail to do this basic step then surely you are going to miss out on a great deal of personalization which will eventually cost you subscribers.
5. Sending emails with Typos: No one wants to read content with basic spelling and grammar mistakes. The email content does not really have to be top-notch; it is after all, only a few paragraphs of content and needs to be written in a friendly and conversational tone. People like to skim through emails, so a scanable email with short sentences is the best way to go about it. Just avoid the basic writing mistakes and it should be ok.
6. Un-optimized and generic subject lines: It does not really takes a lot of time to add the usernames and first name fields in email subject lines and the previews and openings. Yet, people make this basic mistake and the entire email campaign becomes unsolicited.
7. Not adding a visible un-subscribe text or button: If any of your subscriber wants to go away, it is best to let them go. If you have people on your list that isn’t interested in your emails, they don’t open or read the emails, then it is a far better choice to let them leave. However, if someone wants to leave and can’t find the un-subscribe button then the situation is far worse.
The quickest solution here is to make sure that the, unsubscribe option is clearly visible in the email footer.
8. Adding too many Images: Having images in the email body makes the email stand out, but it happens only if the images are loaded. Most email service providers don’t like the images and they either block those images, or does not make them visible. When it comes to emails, plain text is a far better choice.
9. Don’t add attachments to your emails: No one really takes the time to download the attachment that you send everyone by email. Never send any attachments via. emails, unless it is that ebook which you promised when they signed up to your newsletter.
10. Over sell: Try to make sure that your emails are more about educating and informing rather than selling. People don’t like to see every email to be a sales email. Try to keep sales and promotional emails to a bare minimum.
11. Not having email signup options on website: Don’t want for traffic to start flowing before you add the email signup button. Try to get the subscribe now button and the exit intent popup to catch email ids from the very first day your website is live.
12. Ignoring Call to Actions: Unless your subscriber buys something or takes a CTA decision, the real purpose of your email campaign does not gets fulfilled. It is important that you optimize your CTA buttons so that the user clicks on them.
13. Missing out on test emails: Surely, your email is flawless and you have already checked it multiple times and it is ready to be broadcasted. However, do note that if you press that send button, there’s no getting back and all your subscribers will receive the email. If there are any mistakes with your email, you can’t fix it if you have already sent.
Here, the only true option is to send you a test email and then check it thoroughly before sending out the email campaign.
It is only human to make mistakes, but do note that these mistakes costs time, money and reputation. You do gain knowledge by committing mistakes, but the same amount of knowledge can be acquired easily if you just take note of the mistakes that other people do and make sure to not do it yourself.